BUSINESS PEOPLE

BUSINESS PEOPLE; Blockbuster President Returning to Academe

By Daniel F. Cuff

Published: December 17, 1990

Luigi Salvaneschi has had a successful career at McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Blockbuster Entertainment, the video chain, as a top executive. But all through those years, "I continued living my private life, keeping the two sides very alive, doing it on the plane or sitting in the airport," he said.

What Mr. Salvaneschi was doing in those spare moments was reading Latin or composing a piece of music, keeping up his "appreciation for the beautiful things, for music, the arts."

Mr. Salvaneschi has the credentials. He studied canon law at the Vatican and civil law at the University of Rome and was immersed in Latin and philosophy before he came to the United States.

On Friday, the 61-year-old executive announced his retirement, effective Feb. 1, as president of Blockbuster, which is based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He is headed back to the academic life.

Mr. Salvaneschi plans to teach at Barry University, a Roman Catholic college in Miami Shores, Fla., while remaining on the Blockbuster board. The company did not immediately name a replacement. He said he would teach management, franchising "and my specialty, a course on business executives and the humanities." He said he would also be able to teach Latin, French and Italian.

Mr. Salvaneschi's life changed when he met his wife, Lenore, who had a Ph.D. from Iowa University and was doing further study in Rome.

The couple moved to the United States, where Mr. Salvaneschi met June Martino, secretary to Ray A. Kroc, founder of McDonald's; she had been his wife's neighbor. Ms. Martino, who owned a McDonald's in Chicago, gave him a $70-a-week job, and he spent 23 years with the company, leaving as executive vice president in charge of real estate.

In 1983, he moved to a similar post at Kentucky Fried Chicken, which was then owned by RJR Reynolds before its purchase by Pepsico Inc. Mr. Salvaneschi decided to retire in 1987 and teach at the University of Louisville. A few months later, though, he received a call from H. Wayne Huizenga, one of the founders of Waste Management Inc., who had left and was getting Blockbuster under way. Mr. Huizenga is Blockbuster's chairman and chief executive.

Mr. Salvaneschi signed on as president to help build a chain of outlets. The company has grown from 40 stores to 1,800.